Criticism of 1975 Album
Criticism of the 1975 official release of The Basement Tapes has centered on two issues: the recordings by the Band on their own, and the selection of the Dylan songs. In his book about the basement sessions, Greil Marcus describes the album's contents as "sixteen basement recordings plus eight Band demos". Critic Michael Gray writes of the album, "The interspersed tracks by the Band alone merely disrupt the unity of Dylan material, much more of which should have been included. Key songs missing here include 'I Shall Be Released' and 'The Mighty Quinn'". Heylin similarly argues that compiler Robbie Robertson did Dylan fans "a major disservice" by omitting those two songs as well as "I'm Not There" and "Sign On The Cross". He writes, "The album as released hardly gave a real idea of what they had been doing in Woodstock. Not even the two traditional songs pulled to the master reels—'Young But Daily Growin'' and 'The Banks Of The Royal Canal'—made the final twenty-four cuts."
The honesty of the 1975 album was questioned by a reviewer of the remastered version of the Band's Music From Big Pink, issued in 2000. Dave Hopkins noted that "Katie's Been Gone", which appears as a bonus track on the Big Pink reissue, is the same recording that appeared on The Basement Tapes, but now "in stereo and with improved sound quality beyond what the remastering process alone would provide". Hopkins declared, "The cat's out of the bag: 'Katie' and the other Band-only tracks on The Basement Tapes must have been intentionally muddied in the studio in 1975 so that they would fit better alongside the Dylan material recorded in the basement with a home reel-to-reel." Heylin also takes exception to Robertson's passing off the Band's songs as originating from the basement sessions. By including eight Band recordings to Dylan's sixteen, he says, "Robertson sought to imply that the alliance between Dylan and the Band was far more equal than it was: 'Hey, we were writing all these songs, doing our own thing, oh and Bob would sometimes come around and we'd swap a few tunes.'" Heylin asserts that "though revealing in their own right, the Band tracks only pollute the official set and reduce its stature."
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"Don't Ya Tell Henry"
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. With Helm singing "with characteristic Southern brio", Hudson’s honky-tonk piano and Robertson’s lead guitar, this track reflects the distinctive sound that the Band developed. This is one of several Band-only songs on the album whose recording history is disputed: Bowman dates it to late 1967 or early 1968, while Griffin lists it among the songs Fraboni says were recorded in 1975. Read more about this topic: The Basement Tapes Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism and/or album:“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.” “It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.” “What a long strange trip it’s been.” |